As the city of Santa Cruz and local Internet service provider Cruzio bring their negotiations to a close, the parties have been working diligently to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. Announced in June 2015, this public private partnership intends to build a multi-million dollar fiber network throughout the city.

According to Cruzio's most recent blog update:

[W]e’ve been locked away in our Santa Cruz Fiber Project underground bunker with our partners at the City, engaging in high-level cogitation, extreme fine-tuning and the general hashing out of every little detail of the project and the agreement.

Local news station KION covered the benefits of faster Internet service, especially for the small business community in Santa Cruz. The news station also includes a clip from a recent “City Hall to You” community meeting where people learned more about the network.

A Small Business Town

“It's absolutely critical. Without high-speed Internet activity here, we would be dead in the water,”

Explained Susan Pappas, the owner of True Olive Connection, a local olive oil store. She described how her business would fall apart without high-speed Internet access. Everything from printers to inventory would stop working.

At the “City Hall to You” meeting, Santa Cruz Economic Development Manager J. Guevara laid out the facts, emphasizing how Internet access is not just for tech startups. High-speed Internet access makes small businesses function and helps job-seekers find employment. Guevara told KION,

“Over 82 percent of the businesses in the city of Santa Cruz are 10 or fewer employees. This is a small business town and Internet is the infrastructure that makes it all possible.”

Infrastructure from Santa Cruz and Cruzio

The $45 million dollar infrastructure project is a public-private...

Warren County, Kentucky, issued a Request for Information (RFI) in June to find partners in order to improve connectivity for local businesses and residents. County officials want to develop a Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network and are willing to consider both publicly owned and privately owned options. RFI responses are due July 8th.

The community has prioritized the following in its RFI:

1. A community-wide FTTP work to serve both businesses and homes
2. An open access model to encourage competition
3. A financially sustainable network
4. A network that provides affordable base-level service for everyone

Warren County

There are approximately 120,500 people in Warren County with about half living in the county seat, Bowling Green. After Louisville and Lexington, Bowling Green is the most populous. Located in the south central area of the state, Warren County is about 548 square miles. This region of the state had a relatively high growth rate of 24 percent between 2003 and 2014 and Warren County officials want to continue that trend with better connectivity.

In addition to Western Kentucky University, there are several other colleges and technical colleges in the region. STEM education at both the college and K-12 levels is prevalent in Warren County. The area is home to the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematic and Science,  which was named best high school in America three years in a row by Newsweek.

There is a range of industry, including finance, health care, agriculture, and manufacturing. The community seeks to improve connectivity to retain a number of its employers as well as diversify its economy further, encourage better services for residents, and spark competition.

Don't Delay

Get the details on Warren County's RFI by accessing their Bids Calendar. Responses to this RFI are due by July 8th. You can also contact Brenda Hale with questions: brenda.hale(at)ky.gov.

The city of Ammon, Idaho, is building the Internet network of the future. Households and businesses can instantly change Internet service providers using a specially-designed innovative portal. This short 20 minute video highlights how the network is saving money, creating competition for broadband services, and creating powerful new public safety applications.

We talk with Ammon's Mayor, local residents, private businesses, and the city's Technology Director to understand why a small conservative city decided to build its own network and then open it to the entire community. We explain how they financed it and even scratch the surface of how software-defined networking brought the future of Internet services to Ammon before any larger metro regions.

Ammon's network has already won awards, including a National Institute of Justice Challenge for Best Ultra-High Speed Application, and spurred economic development. But perhaps most important is that most communities can replicate this model and bring these benefits to their communities.

For more information, see our in-depth coverage on Ammon. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to stay informed on what local governments are doing to improve Internet access.

View the video below, or on YouTube here. Please share widely!

Now that a judge has legally approved it, Ammon is forging ahead with an innovative approach to financing Internet infrastructure in Idaho.

On May 19th, the city council unanimously voted to create a Local Improvement District (LID). Ammon’s decision has secured a way to finance its open access Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network.

Local Improvement Districts: You're In or You're Out

LIDs have been used for fiber-optic infrastructure in other places, such as New Hampshire and Poulsbo, Washington, but the approach is still not widespread. In Ammon, the city council's action creates a district from five subdivisions, where residents can “opt in” or “opt out” of participation in the FTTH network. The district includes 376 individual properties, and 188 of those property owners have expressed a desire to "opt in" to the benefits, and costs, of the network. Those who have chosen to "opt out" do not use the network, nor do they pay for deployment.

LIDs are specifically designed to take advantage of any boost to local property value -- and studies have linked FTTH with increased local property values. We’ve previously summarized the most common ways communities finance networks, but LIDs are a little different.

1. The local community creates a “district” to issue improvement bonds. In this case, the district consists of five subdivisions of the city.
2. Selling those improvement bonds will fund the construction of the local infrastructure project. For Ammon, that’s the open access FTTH network. 
3. The bonds will then be paid for by an assessment on each of the properties that benefit from the network - only the households that choose...